Jennifer Hodge de Silva explained

Jennifer Hodge de Silva
Birth Date:28 January 1951
Birth Place:Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Death Place:Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Nationality:Canadian
Education:Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Fine Arts (1974)
Alma Mater:Glendon College at York University
Known For:filmmaking
Notable Works:Home Feeling: A Struggle for Community (1983)
Movement:Black liberalism
Spouse:Paul de Silva in 1982
Children:Zinzi de Silva
Parents:Mairuth Vaughan Hodge Sarsfield

Jennifer Hodge de Silva (28 January 1951 – 5 May 1989) was a Canadian filmmaker.[1] Her film, Home Feeling: Struggle for a Community, revealed tensions between and police and residents of the Jane and Finch neighbourhood of Toronto. The residents were mainly immigrants from Jamaica and Africa. She worked consistently with national organizations such the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). She was the first black filmmaker to do so.

Career

In 1978 she worked with Terence Macartney-Filgate on the film Fields of Endless Day as assistant director and associate producer while she was a student. The next year she worked with him again as associate producer of the CBC documentary Dieppe 1942. She covered stories about the lives of Chinese-Canadian immigrants and Indigenous artists and covered social issues in diverse neighbourhoods.[2]

Cameron Bailey, a Canadian film critic and artistic director of the Toronto International Film Festival, acknowledged her work in his 1990 article later published in a film anthology.[3] [4] [5] In his 1990s publications Bailey honoured the work of black filmmakers such as Jennifer Hodge de Silva. The forms of production in which she worked were 'marginalized'. At times she made films that were sponsored for organizations such as of Education and the John Howard Society.[6]

Home Feeling: A Struggle for Community

Her 1983 documentary Home Feeling: A Struggle for Community,[7] examining the relations between the police force and the black community, continues to be used in classrooms to this day.

Personal life

Jennifer Hodge de Silva comes from a family of women social activists — her grandmother, Anna Packwood and her daughters, Mairuth Vaughan Hodge Sarsfield (married to Cullen Squire Hodge) and Lucille Vaughn Cuevas.[8]

Selected filmography

Notes and References

  1. Encyclopedia: Jennifer Hodge da Silva . . 12 March 2007 . 15 February 2016 . Leslea Kroll . Andrew McIntosh.
  2. Cameron Bailey, 1990, "A Cinema of Duty: The Films of Jennifer Hodge de Silva", CineAction
  3. News: Cameron Bailey named artistic director of Toronto International Film Festival . . March 14, 2012 . dead . April 23, 2017 . https://archive.today/20150121000908/http://arts.nationalpost.com/2012/03/14/cameron-bailey-named-artistic-director-of-toronto-international-film-festival/ . 21 January 2015 .
  4. Book: Bailey, Cameron . A Cinema of Duty: The Films of Jennifer Hodge de Silva . Gendering the Nation: Canadian Women's Cinema] . Kay . Armatage . Kass . Banning . Brenda . Longfellow . Janine . Marchessault . Toronto . University of Toronto . 1999 . 94–108 . 0802041205.
  5. Cameron Bailey . A Cinema of Duty: The Films of Jennifer Hodge de Silva. CineAction . 23 . winter . 1990 . 4–12.
  6. Cameron . Bailey . A Cinema of Duty: The Films of Jennifer Hodge de Silva . International Review of African American Art . 10 . 1 . 1992 . 51–59 . 38561280. Hampton, Virginia . Hampton University .
  7. Jennifer Hodge and Roger McTair . 1983 . Home Feeling: A Struggle for Community . English . 14 April 2017 . film . Toronto . .
  8. Web site: Flynn-Burhoe . Maureen . Positive Presence of Absence: A History of the African Canadian Community through Works in the Permanent Collection of the National Gallery of Canada . Ottawa, Ontario . 2003 . Carleton University, cited in Collections Canada .